"Little Rock" is a bilingual poem published by Cuban writer
Nicolás Guillén
Nicolás Cristóbal Guillén Batista (10 July 1902 – 17 July 1989) was a Cuban poet, journalist, political activist, and writer. He is best remembered as the national poet of Cuba. in 1958. The text is a direct denunciation of the race-based segregation present within the United States and written after the
Little Rock Crisis
Little is a synonym for small size and may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* ''Little'' (album), 1990 debut album of Vic Chesnutt
* ''Little'' (film), 2019 American comedy film
*The Littles, a series of children's novels by American author John P ...
emerged during the
Civil Rights Movement
The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional Racial segregation in the United States, racial segregation, Racial discrimination ...
. As a satirical claim, the poem written in both English and Spanish serves as an appeal to imagine how a changing world would be without race differences. As part of the anthology ''La paloma del vuelo popular'' (the dove of popular flight), the composition is fully representative of the "black poetry" he used to write, just as the use of names and real situations at the same time gives a qualitative value where applied.
As seen in the final verses, the references to Little Rock city and the Arkansas governor Faubus turn into metaphors for qualifying segregation actions:
a world of white schools for whites
a world all Rock and all Little
a world all Yanquee and all Faubus
As a piece of literature, the poem was a response to the Little Rock events, in the same way as was "
Fables of Faubus
Fable is a literary genre: a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, legendary creatures, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature that are anthropomorphized, and that illustrates or leads to a particular mor ...
" by jazzist Charles Mingus. The coherence of Butler's vindication can be found in later works in which he «continued to rail against the rabid racism of the United States. His ironic ''El Gran Zoo'' (The Great Zoo) is caustic in its critic of
"Lynch Law" (a law that is satirized in the verse "
..''sons of Lynch their playmates''" of "Little Rock").
See also
*
Governor Faubus
*
Racial segregation in the United States
In the United States, racial segregation is the systematic separation of facilities and services such as Housing in the United States, housing, Healthcare in the United States, healthcare, Education in the United States, education, Employment in ...
References
{{Reflist
External links
“Little Rock”by
Nicolás Guillén
Nicolás Cristóbal Guillén Batista (10 July 1902 – 17 July 1989) was a Cuban poet, journalist, political activist, and writer. He is best remembered as the national poet of Cuba. in ''Man-making words: selected poems of Nicolás Guillén'', 1958.
ilingual publish
20th-century poems
American poems
1958 poems
Cuban poetry
Works about Arkansas